Epicerie Boulud Will Bring Fresh Pastries and an Oyster Bar to the UWS in May

We spent most of our time at last night’s Culinary Institute of America Leadership Awards Gala asking chefs about Paul Bocuse, but when we caught up to Daniel Boulud — who tells us Bocuse once got him drunk when he was 14 — we also wanted to know what the status was with his two forthcoming restaurants, Boulud Sud and Epicerie Boulud, which are now slated to open the first week of May — just in time “for the James Beards, I think,” Boulud told Grub Street.

It sounds like the corner of 64th and Broadway will be Boulud Central when the restaurants open next door to Bar Boulud, and that customers will be able to get, well … pretty much anything.

At Epicerie Boulud, the chef says, “We will have boulongerie, patisserie, charcuterie, fromagerie, glacerie, and Viennoiserie and of course sandwiches and salads as well.” He went on. “We make our own bread at Daniel and all my restaurants, so we’ll have a team of bakers. We make our own charcuterie in all our restaurants so we’ll have a team of charcutiers.”

And Boulud tells us that’s not all: “Then we’re making all the patisserie, Viennoiserie, cakes. We’re just going to do something different that we do in the restaurants. There’ll be a bar inside the restaurant where there’ll be a breakfast bar to go to a lunch bar to crêpes in the afternoon, and an oyster bar during the day and night. So you can have a glass of wine and a dozen oysters and run to the opera.”